Agency sales and BD terms, defined.

Account intelligence is written research on a named target account — who decides, what changed recently, and where the incumbent is exposed.

Account-based marketing is a go-to-market motion that treats a short list of named target accounts as individual markets, coordinating outreach, content, and messaging around each one specifically.

ACV, or annual contract value, is the average yearly revenue a single client contract is worth, used to size pipeline and forecast retainer revenue.

A BD comp plan defines how a business-development hire is paid against pipeline, closed revenue, and retention, structured to reward sustainable growth rather than one-time closes.

A buying committee is the full group of people inside a prospect organization who influence, approve, or can block a purchase decision.

A discovery script is a structured set of questions used in the first substantive sales conversation to qualify fit, budget, and decision process before proposing scope.

Founder-sourced pipeline is new business that only comes in because the founder personally introduces it, rather than through a repeatable team process.

An ICP, or ideal customer profile, is a written description of the type of account an agency wins most often and retains longest, used to prioritize outreach.

Keiretsu introductions are warm referrals routed through Japan's traditional corporate group networks, still a significant channel into large Japanese enterprises.

Land-and-expand is a sales motion that starts with a small, low-risk first engagement and grows the account into a larger retainer over time.

MEDDICC is a B2B sales qualification framework covering Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion, and Competition.

Pipeline coverage is the ratio of total qualified pipeline value to a revenue target, typically expressed as a multiple such as 3x or 4x.

Presales productization is the process of converting past delivered work into a fixed-scope, fixed-price offer that can be sold repeatedly without rebuilding the proposal.

Referral dependency is a state in which the majority of an agency's new business arrives through word-of-mouth referral rather than a repeatable, trackable origination process.

Retainer pricing charges a fixed recurring fee for ongoing capacity, while project pricing charges a fixed or scoped fee for a defined deliverable with a clear end date.

Revenue concentration measures what share of total revenue comes from the single largest client, a key risk indicator for founder-led agencies.

Ringi is a Japanese consensus-based approval process in which a written proposal circulates for sign-off across multiple departments and levels before a decision is finalized.

Sales cycle length is the average time between first qualified contact with a prospect and a signed contract, tracked by segment and deal size.

Tier account scoring is a ranking system that scores prospect accounts against an agency's actual delivery fit, not proxy signals like headcount or funding.

Win rate is the percentage of qualified opportunities that close as signed business, one of the core metrics used to set realistic pipeline coverage targets.